Monday, 10 February 2014

It's no secret that I'm a sucker for a Citadel boxed set. I love getting miniatures in the original boxes though I'm happy to take them out and paint them. I haven't gone as far as to buy an empty box but would consider it for a set of miniatures I already had without box. Somehow the boxes are as evocative of the earlier periods of Games Workshop as the miniatures and I love them. Indeed I've posted on my collection of printed card encased miniatures before.

Since then my collection has grown and I have decided I really ought to do another post and here I concentrate on early 40K, that's Rogue Trader to you and me. A number of these I haven't seen photographed anywhere yet.

So here is the RT only pile, not complete by any margin but on the way. Only the Imperial Guard are original from my youth, bought about 1990 I guess.

Now a closer look:

I believe these go for a fair bit these days, particularly if like me your box contains the kit:

This was bought some time ago with the intention to make it up but maybe it does well as an artifact, not many kits left on the sprue like this anymore. Certainly not with the original decals. I probably have enough old land raiders.

Next is the Rhino, this is my newest box and sadly the Rhino is made up but did come with yet another predator, landspeeder and rapier which had so far been missing from my collection.

I'll finish the vehicles first before moving on to the figures. The Battle wagon is currently an empty box, the kit was present but is being made up at the moment, unlike the land raider it was already half constructed.
There are a few shots of the front of the box out there.

Not sure I know any of the back. the text should be readable if you click on the image.

More orks then I've had a few sets of these raiders for years but maybe six months ago I finally picked up a set in their box for a price I thought fair (probably less than they originally cost). Again we know the front.

But what about the back? The only set to have a story like the Fantasy Regiments of Renown. However you'll notice this set is marked as a regiment of renown. Again clicking on the picture should make it readable.

Speaking of Regiments of Renown the Harlequins are labeled as such.

But don't actually have a story.

I think my favorite set has still got to be the beaky marines. The box just has the right blend of reflective 80s writing, technical style drawings, model pictures, colours and of course iconic painting. This is 40K bliss.

Again I'm not sure there are any pictures of the rear of the box out there.

And this side art I don't think I have seen anywhere but on the box.

So that's RT for you. Let me know if there is anything else you'd like to see. In a later post soon I'll take you through my more recently acquired 2nd/3rd ed fantasy boxsets. If there is any interest I could also do several posts on my 90's 4th ed fantasy and 2nd ed 40K boxed sets, that would take a great many posts but they are becoming older and rarer.

So when a club friend challenged me to fight his dwarves I knew I just had to take dark elves. To keep things simple we decided to go with just 1000 pts a side.

The battle was fought over a vale bordered on two sides by rocky hills. In the center there was a wood and a ruined temple to some evil deity.

Here's how the armies stacked up:

On one side the dark elves deployed masked by hills and woods from the dwarves.

On the other the dwarves set up hoping to catch the pansy elves in the open with their war machines. The thunderes in the army all fired as crossbows. Must have been a new powder mix.

Separated by a large rocky outcrop from the main dwarf force was a unit of giant slayers.

The battle started with the dark elf force rushing forward behind what cover was available, this meant that almost all the dark elf force was on the right most side of the battle field. The Dark Elf sorceress Mistress Glutton struggled to keep up. Her singular chaos mutation was to be enormously fat and traveled at half speed. Her spells had also been close to useless with such spells as immunity from poison and flight. Where was wind blast.

Realising his firing line had no targets and the dark elves were going to take his flank the Dwarf general started to redeploy his army shifting it round to face the coming threat. The giant slayers surged forward eager to engage the witch elves in a sky clad frothing frenzy. The stone thrower launched an indirect missle at the unit of warriors and missed.

However after another two turns the indirect fire had wiped out most of the warriors, luckily the general Lord H'ward (he how has something of the night about him) had escaped so far but things didn't look good. Drastic action was needed. The chaos hound handler was instructed to send her beasts directly towards the main dwarf battle line hopefully to draw fire. Mistress Glutton took to the air like a depraved blimp eager to take on the warmachine crew in single combat.

Before the Crossbows began picking their way through the wood as was their orders they let loose a single volley towards the oncoming Giant slayers.

The giant slayers edged ever closer and the dark elf warriors were all wiped out by indirect fire from the stone thrower. Lord H'ward was killed. The witch elves were only too keen to charge the Giant slayers and they proved to be more than a match for the frothing loonies.

These vents took place over several turns and in the meantime Mistress Glutton had managed to position herself (with several flight spells) in order to charge the stone thrower crew, once these were dispatched she was able to deliver the same fate to the cannon crew aided by strength of combat giving her an extra attack.

The dwarf general, a slayer himself had worked himself up into a frenzy and charged the chaos hounds who quickly fled. The dwarf warriors in Tesudo were unable to catch the venerable general up and he was pin-cushioned by the Dark elf crossbows.

The witch elves managed to work around the dwarven flank to make short work of one unit of crossbows. The second would be easily dispatched however the main unit of dwarf warriors was too large to be engaged. Equally the dark elf forces were too fast for the lumbering unit of warriors to catch. The battle ended in a stalemate.

It was a fun game and really brought home the Dark Elf vulnerability to war machines. I have some thoughts on the issue but as I plan to challenge for a rematch I'll leave those thoughts until another time.

Saturday, 1 February 2014

This post has been a long time coming. I meant to do a post about the force I got freshly painted up for, bring out your lead '13, shortly after the event. I'm rubbish at blogging so it is only now I have gotten round to it. This is everything I have repainted to my current standard so includes bits I didn't use on the day including the wyvern rider. I have also sneaked in some trolls that haven't been repainted yet but they help round the force out to 3000pts.

Now after Chico resurrected the idea of doing Warhammer armies poses I decided to go for it myself. Here we have me in Goblin master pose it seamed appropriate.

Now a closer look at the units:

Twenty orc boys with a champion I'm really please with how this unit turned out, it contains many of my original orc boys from back in the day.

Another twenty Orcs with champion made up of marauders excellent orcs, notice a chariot rider that I couldn't resist putting in the front rank.

Nine snortas with Champion and magic banner. You may recognise them from my banner.

Twelve arrer boyz these are also very old collected from junk bins in toy soldier shops over the years before the days of e-bay.

More Arrer boyz, twenty two, all armed with crossbows.

My wyvern rider, classic mini and I guess the center piece of the force. That rounds off all the orc units on to the goblins.

Two units of ten wolf boys. One unit of Marauder and one of Citadel, not sure which is my favorite, what do you think?

Twenty eight gobbos with spears, shields and light armour.

Forty goblin stikkas. I don't care how rubbish they are or how tough the opponent forty short bows are going to mess your day up. particularly when you have fanatics hidden in your midst.

Speaking of which here are the mad little runts. These have only had a very quick paint, literally the night before the big day I got these painted as much as I could they certainly need revisiting and I have a few more slotta and pre slotta fanatics to add to the ...? What is a group of goblin ball and chain fanatics called, a frenzy, a whirl, a mosh?
You can also see on of the armies goblin wizards.

So here are some old trolls and stone throwers that also need attention from the brush. There is also a marauder black orc pretending to be a hero while he waits for the rest of his unit to be painted.

So whats next, I could do with getting the bits that need finishing done first but I think bumping the trolls up to ten is a must followed by more boys for each of the two infantry blocks and an army banner.

For even further in the future I need to get the two orc RoR painted, goblin and orc chariots, a third unit of boys, more boar riders, and well the list goes on.